In the late 1980's the alternative rock movement spun off a subgenre penned as "shoegazing" by the New Musical Express. The moniker comes from the low-key performance style of the genre's practitioners.
That is, shoegaze musicians would play while almost motionless on stage while staring at their shoes, never acknowledging the audience. Most agree that the album instrumental for the development of the shoegazing style is The Jesus and Mary Chain's 1985 debut Psychocandy.
Psychocandy provides the starting point and captures the essence of the genre's fuzzed-out, distorted, wall-of-sound instrumentation, and vocals that are just under the surface, but with big pop hook melodies. A swirling combination of psychedelia and teenage shyness wrapped up in an image that was the antithesis of the rock star.
It's a sound that sunk it's teeth into me the first time I heard Psychocandy in 1986, and it has not let go since. Of course, as with all classifications of music, the genre has overlaps,
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